


Perennial

by spirrum



Series: A Different Path [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Family Fluff, Kidfic, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5405630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirrum/pseuds/spirrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His legacy is more than death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. perennial

**Author's Note:**

> Salvia officinalis (also known as "sage"): a perennial, evergreen subshrub.

He’s given his heart to many things – a cause, a people, a past. And he’s lost it to even more still; the love of a woman with the world in her palm, and  _her_ cause, her people and her future. But in his long life, nothing has gripped his heart with quite the same fervour as the pair of hands he holds between his own now; plump little fingers cupped around the heat of a small flame.

“Focus.”

Lower lip tucked firmly between her teeth, she heaves a breath – a terribly grave and serious thing that makes it hard not to smile, but she has her gaze fixed firmly on the flame between her palms, and pays no mind to his amusement.

Footsteps behind him, and the trail of fingers along his neck. He feels her familiar warmth against his side, and the tender lilt of her voice, a tremor in his chest. “I see you’ve moved a safe distance from the cottage. How is she getting on?”

The spark of a smile prompted by her mother’s appearance makes the flame flicker and grow, and her delight is quick to follow. “Mamae, look!”

Ellana’s own smile is fond, if not touched with a small amount of droll humour. “Clever girl, though I hope you’re not trying to beguile me with your charms in order to distract me from the fact that it’s long past your bedtime?” She offers Solas a look. “I wonder where she gets that from.”

“I fail to see the comparison,” he counters smoothly, cupping his hands over those in his grip, trapping the flame. Startled, Sage makes to pull her hands back–

“Da’vhenan,” he says, calmly. “It will only burn you if you let it.”

The expression that greets him when she lifts her eyes is one of understanding, heavy and severe in the way of children, but the small, trembling nod betrays her front of bravery. But she doesn’t pull her hands from his, and Solas sees some of the tension bleed out of her shoulders with her next breath.

When he opens his hands the flame is gone, and her disappointment escapes in a small noise.

He looks up at his wife, observing their interaction with interest. “We could give her one more hour?”

Ellana’s smile turns wry, and he sees the tiredness that sits in her eyes. “I thought we were keeping proper hours in this house. She’s not being raised by wolves.” At his look, she laughs. “No? I thought it was funny.” Then with a grin, she makes to reach for her daughter, nimble and quick despite her lacking appendage and the size of her stomach, and stifling elated shrieks with a peppering of kisses against round, freckled cheeks as she hoists her onto her hip. “Come on now, you wild thing. It’s time to get you into bed.”

A small pat against her shoulder, and “ _Mamae_ ,” Sage murmurs, then – something against Ellana’s ear, the words too low for Solas to catch where he sits.

“You’d rather have Papae tuck you in? What, is my rendition of The Little Nug That Could not heartfelt enough?”

A long moment passes – the pause of one who does not wish to offend, though Solas doubts she could if she tried. And, “Counts freckles,” Sage says at length, mumbling the words into her mother’s collar.

Ellana’s look is one of long-suffering sparked with fondness. “Papae counts your freckles?” Then with a softly laughing sigh, “Well, I suppose it’s good to keep track of them. I know how elusive freckles can be.” She looks at Solas, but there’s no insult to be found in her expression.

Rising to his feet, it’s to place a kiss against her forehead. “You could join us,” he speaks the words against her brow, smile curving. “I find your reading quite impassioned.”

That earns him a snort. “You’ll regret saying that two passages in, when I start doing the different voices.” A glance at the girl on her hip, as though to ask for confirmation, but it’s to find her half asleep, nose tucked against her throat. “Although it looks like there won’t be much need of either freckle-counting or reading tonight.” But she’s handing her over even as she speaks the words, and he takes the burden from her arms, watching with a frown the grimace that crosses her face, before she presses her knuckles into the small of her back.

Small hands curl in his tunic as a sleepy mumble falls against his neck, and he allows Sage’s weight to rest on his arm. “You should not tax yourself.”

Ellana waves him off. “It’s just back pains.”

“Even so, the burden–”

She meets his objection with a smile that stops the words on his tongue. “It’s the easiest burden I’ve ever carried,” she says, with a touch against his arm, before tucking a curling lock of red hair behind a pointed ear, a desperate affection in the brightness of her eyes. “Well, maybe the second easiest. For some reason I’m so much larger now than when I was this far along with Sage.”

He wonders if he should remark on the observation, a suspicion he’s carried for a while but not yet shared, but he isn’t given the chance when she looks towards him, with a smile that’s for him alone. “Come on. You can put her to bed, and then I can tuck  _you_  in.”

The raised brow only prompts her smile to stretch even wider. “Something tells me it is not quite a bedtime story you have in mind,” Solas chuckles.

Her laughter is a sudden burst of sound – the loudest found in their quiet home, at least for another few months, and it reminds him that he’s split his heart two ways. Three ways, soon, or even four, if his suspicions are correct. He’s had more to give than he’d ever thought possible, but then she’d made it her mission to prove him wrong, in this as in anything.

“Some days I wish she’d stay this age forever,” Ellana says as they set off towards the cottage, the evening’s gentle dark a welcome embrace and the lights of their small home winking in the distance.

Against his shoulder, Sage slumbers, the smell of woodsmoke and the wild forest in the hair curling beneath his chin. “Everything changes,” Solas counters. “You cannot stop growth.”

“You know, I think I’ve heard those words before,” she says, with mischief in her smile. “Must have been a very wise person who spoke them.”

He meets her smile with stark honesty. “The wisest I have ever known.”

Her laughter is nothing more than a startled breath now, and he takes some pleasure in the fact that he can still catch her off guard. But she’s quick to recover, and, “Flattery like that will definitely get you more than a bedtime story,” she says, stepping across the threshold, though there’s more to the words than their lightness suggests, but then this has always been their way.

They put their daughter to bed in silence, a familiar routine in the way they move around each other, tucking small feet beneath the soft wool blanket, and making sure the mage-light is lit. Solas touches a fingertip to the ward on the windowsill, and Ellana excuses herself to use the privy with a sigh weary with familiarity.

He’s halfway to the door when the small voice drifts towards him from the bed.

“Forgot to count,” Sage says, the words a drowsy tumble of syllables, but he catches their meaning well enough.

Solas settles against the mattress, watching the bleary blinking of her eyes as she tries to keep them open. And if her guile is his then her stubbornness is all her mother’s.

“One,” he says, with a touch against a pert nose, wrinkling with dissatisfaction.

“With kisses.”

His laughter is a huff, but not of irritation. And, “Two,” he speaks against her brow, to a small giggle he feels in his bones, light and sleep-spelled where it falls against his ear. And she’s fast asleep before he’s gotten to ten, but he spends a moment in the silence, counting quietly in his mind until he’s made it tofifteen, twenty _,_  and wonders how many will fade with age ( _twenty-five, thirty_ ). How many will there be to count when she’s grown past his knee – past his waist? ( _forty, forty-five, and that small cluster by her ear_ )

“Solas?”

He doesn’t look up to see Ellana in the doorway, his gaze still held by the shape on the bed; those incomprehensibly small breaths deep and heavy with sleep. And she doesn’t come to stand beside him, or take his hand to whisk him away.

“Whenever you’re ready,” is all she says, and he hears the shuffle of her feet as she leaves; the tell-tale, uneven gait prompted by her added weight. She doesn’t wait for him to respond, though he suspects she already knows the words that sit on his tongue now – that he’ll never be ready, not truly, but it’s not with sadness he considers the thought but something fiercer; a deep-rooted knowledge that ready or not, he will not waste the future – this future, dear and bright and freckled-cheeked – by looking back.


	2. growth

She is his daughter in so many things – her quiet nature and her soft-spoken voice; the small dimple in her chin and the sharp jut of her ears, but she’s never so much her mother’s girl as when she has a question on her mind.

Which is why it doesn’t come as a surprise when, after having spent a morning feeling the kick of small feet against her mother’s considerable stomach, she asks,

“Papae, who put them there?”

They’re sitting by the river, watching the fish streak beneath the glassy surface of the water, silver scales caught in a fleeting touch by the sun’s rays before they’ve disappeared amidst the reeds. She’s picked a small assortment of polished stones from the riverbed, but there’s an air of distraction about her that tells him her mind is too preoccupied for the water’s treasures.

“In mamae’s stomach,” Sage elaborates, when he hasn’t answered. She uses _them_ , now – they all do, and have for some time. There are two sets of feet, and two sets of small arms; the nudge of an elbow here, and there a kick against her hipbone.  _Twins_ , he’d explained, when asked. Babes who are alike in appearance.

She’s been pondering the question for some time, Solas can tell. Likely because she will have tried to find the answer herself, a small streak of stubbornness that could just as well be his own as Ellana’s. But she appears to have relented, as she’s now brought it to his attention.

“You know how we plant seeds?” Solas asks at length.

Sage looks up, eyes large with curiosity at the unexpected turn of the conversation. She had most likely expected something a little different, but as children are wont to do, her acceptance is an easy thing. “Like mamae’s herbs?”

 _After a fashion_. And he has to school his expression to not let his humour show. “Yes. Like the seed that grows in the soil, there is a seed in mamae’s stomach.”

She tilts her head curiously. “It’s growing?”

A nod. “You were the same.”

She looks down at herself, a sudden, pensive press to her mouth. “Hm.”

She doesn’t ask any more questions after that, and they fall back to watching the fish as she sets about sorting her collection of stones. And he doesn’t stop to wonder if perhaps it was a little too easy; that such a desperately curious mind wouldn’t settle for such a simple explanation without further query. But it’s the folly of the long-lived, to forget that the simplicity of children’s logic sometimes carries far more merit than the century-long ponderings of the immortal.

Of course, it’s not until a dewy spring morning, finding their daughter talking to the garden plants, that Solas acquiesces that he might have underestimated the sheer extent of her imagination.

Her talk is unusually animated, and they spend a moment watching from across the garden, before Ellana makes to approach her where she sits, the sleeves of her green dress rolled up to her elbows and her bare feet covered in dirt.

“Sage, what are you doing?”

Looking up at her mother’s approach, Sage’s smile curves with an easy delight. There’s a smudge of dirt by her cheek, and green things caught in her russet curls.

“Talking to the babies,” she announces simply, small hand patting a mound in the soil, from which a small green weed has sprouted.

Coming to stand beside his wife, Solas catches Ellana’s quiet query, “Is this one of Varric’s ideas?”

A breathless laugh. “Not quite.”

She gives him a look. “Did you tell her we were growing children in our garden, Solas?”

He doesn’t answer, but Sage seems to have a reply at the ready. “Seeds,” she says, by way of explanation, as though her mother might need one.

“Ah,” Ellana concedes, a wry humour that will go over their girl’s head for some years yet in the smiling purse of her mouth. “I see.” Then beneath her breath, “Well she’s not  _wrong_.” When she looks at him, her eyes are twinkling. “An admirable save. Very…horticultural.”

“It seemed a preferable alternative to the stork.”

“She didn’t ask how we were planning to uproot them?”

“A small mercy,” Solas laughs.

Getting to her feet, Sage brushes the dirt off her dress. “I’m done.” The she lifts her arms, a wordless question in the gesture, and he bends to pick her up.

“Soon you’ll have more children than you have arms to carry them,” Ellana says then, plucking a leaf from her daughter’s hair. Her weight is familiar where it settles on his arm, small and warm.

“A luxury rather than a dilemma,” Solas counters, tucking his nose against the unruly mop of hair. She smells of the garden; freshly upturned earth and green, growing things. “It is not one I ever imagined having,” he adds, quietly.

Ellana’s look softens, and he thinks of their years, and all they have faced. “But you have it.” And there’s that wry smile again, and shadows he recognizes, though they are fewer with every year. “How’s that for fatalism?”

“There was a time I saw no soil worth tending,” he says. “I will not deny that.” They don’t often speak about the past. He can’t forget his choices, his old vows to old ways, but he’s put it behind him, as best he can. The path ahead is not the path of Death.

A small touch against his chin, drawing his eyes to a pair much like his own, if a shade darker. “Can they come out soon?”

Ellana laughs, a wet sound followed by the quick dab of her sleeves against her eyes, to catch the tears that take very little prompting these days. “Someone is eager. You will have to share your papae, your realize. There might be many more freckles to count.”

A small nose wrinkles at the prospect, and her fingers curl in his fur stole. “Mine first.”

Ellana moves to wipe the smudge off her cheek. “Oh, my heart, I don’t think you need to worry about that.” Rising to the tips of her toes, the movement smooth despite her condition, she touches her lips to Solas’, then to her daughter’s cheek. “I think it’s safe to say you’ve been first since the day you sprouted, leaves and all.” For emphasis, she picks another from the tangle of her hair, eliciting a giggle that she hides against his shoulder. She fits into the curve of his arm like she was made to be there, though when she presses her nose against his throat, a half-possessive, wholly endearing gesture, Solas has to wonder if perhaps he’s the one who was made for her.

“We’ll have a full garden yet,” Ellana murmurs, lifting her eyes to his, and he doesn’t answer, but then it’s hard finding the words, with the happiness that swells with such fierceness in his chest.


	3. tend the soil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone on tumblr wanted some worried dad-to-be Solas.

A loud clatter from the kitchen draws him out of his thoughts, followed by a string of soft curses, and he would have smiled had it not been for her strict rule of ‘no cussing under this roof with impressionable ears present’, broken now by what can only be a considerable amount of pain. And so it’s with worry churning in his gut that he pushes himself to his feet, cutting across the small garden towards the back door of the cottage with ever quickening steps, and his earlier calm is lost to the worry that lurches in his chest when he finds her, back bent and leaning heavily on the kitchen table.

He’s crossed the room in three strides, arm curving around her back to support her weight, and when she draws a sharp breath through her nose he feels her muscles constrict, a spasm that ripples through her.

“I’m fine,” Ellana hisses before he has a chance to ask, but doesn’t protest as he helps her take a seat, and Solas watches with deepening concern as her features draw together with pain. Then, expelling a heavy breath that makes her sag in her seat, “There we go.” Relief washes across her face, her skin pallid and slick with perspiration, and he feels it too, like something uncoiling in his chest, and it drags from his lungs in a ragged sigh.

He’s kneeling before her, brow pressed to the considerable swell of her stomach. He feels her breaths, steadier now that the pain has passed, and beneath them, her racing heartbeat, drumming against his ears.

“You’re always loudest when you’re silent, did you know that?” comes her murmured observation, followed by the tender touch of her fingertips to the back of his neck.

When he doesn’t answer, he hears her sigh – a sound far too old for her years, and, “Solas,” she says, patiently. “I’m _fine_. Still standing – well, sort of.”

He lifts his head, and finds her own tilted slightly, her expression gently pondering. “You overtax yourself,” he tells her evenly.

Ellana gives a fond roll of her eyes. “You call reaching for the top cupboard overtaxing myself? What’s next – am I waddling too quickly? Should I be confined to bed for the next two weeks, or is laying down too much exertion for my body to handle?”

His look says enough about what he thinks of her attempted humour. “You are carrying twins,” he reminds her. A discovery he’d had confirmed some time ago now, and with some trepidation. Her pregnancy has not been without complications, and there is still the birth left to see through before he feels he can properly relax.

He half expects her to counter with another joke – _Am I? Truly? And here I thought I was carrying melons!_ – and is surprised when all she does is reach for his hand.

“Here,” she says, slender fingers curling around his, to place his palm against her stomach, above her left hip and towards her heart. A deep breath, and, “Do you feel that?”

Solas waits for what he’s come to expect now, after long nights spent feeling the curvature of her belly beneath his fingertips. It’s not a kick – this one rarely kicks, but shifts gently under his palm, as though getting comfortable.

“Rowan,” Ellana says, quietly, tongue wrapping lovingly around the word.

Surprise makes his brows lift. “You’ve decided?” They’d agreed not to, on account of the bad luck associated with naming children prematurely – like tempting fate with too much confidence. And though they’re neither of them superstitious, there’s enough of the Dalish ways left in her to make her hesitate before openly challenging the old gods.

And after her last birth, nearly two days confined to her bed with contractions, and a blood loss that had left her almost too weak to see it through, he’s not been willing to risk it, either.

Ellana gives a small shrug, and her smile turns wistful. “After my father. I don’t remember him, but Keeper Deshanna used to say he was the calmest of his kin. Pensive, but with a fire in his heart.” Resting her hand over his, she gives his fingers a squeeze. “Like this one, I think. And it works both for a boy and a girl.”

Solas says nothing, but the image arises despite himself – a set of wide, curious eyes in a heart-shaped face, deeply thoughtful. He’s tried not to give them features yet, the twins, knowing full well the risk, and that a potential loss would be all the harder to bear.

But it’s hard not to picture it now, he finds, with a name to go with the small shape nestled beneath Ellana’s heart.

“I know I said we weren’t going to name them yet,” she says then. “Like we did with Sage. But I remember thinking last time that if I don’t make it I’ll die without knowing the name of my child.” Her grip tightens around his hand, and when she looks at him the good humour is gone from her face, leaving a naked fear she doesn’t even try to hide now, but beneath it sits a fierce conviction he recognizes instantly. “I don’t want that, Solas.”

“I will not let you die,” he says, knowing the promise to be redundant, but her expression softens with a smile.

“I know. But I’m not hinging my hopes on something that’s out of my hands.” The corner of her mouth quirks. “Well. Hand.”

His chuckle is a startled breath, but her smile lifts his spirits, and her conviction is a dear and familiar thing, keeping his fears from fully taking root.

“Rowan,” he says then, testing the name on his tongue.

“Rowan,” Ellana repeats, with a fondness that’s been there for years, but made new with the gentle movement beneath their hands.

“We are one name short,” Solas reminds her, and her answering grin is a sudden, fierce thing, chasing away the shadows from her eyes.

“Only one thing to do about that,” she says, shifting his hand a little lower and to the right, and this time he’s rewarded with a steady kick against his palm.

“Our troublemaker,” she murmurs. “I haven’t thought of anything yet.”

Another hearty kick against his hand, followed by two more in quick succession, the rippling movement strangely mirthful, and the word comes to him with his next breath.

“Samahl,” he says, lifting his eyes to Ellana. “For a boy.”

She hums with delight, and, “I like that,” she laughs, and with the sound, he finds he cannot imagine a better name. “You do know that Varric will never let you live that down?”

Solas only smiles, and doesn’t tell her of the feeling that burns in his chest now – the desperate realization that he wants nothing more than for that to happen; for the birth to go smoothly, and grant them to strong, healthy children to name in truth, and for an uncle to dote upon. He more than anyone knows better than to put his faith in hopes and expectations, but for the span of a single moment, he allows himself to throw caution to the wind.

Ellana looks up then, head angled towards the door to the back garden. “It’s awfully quiet,” she observes. “Where’s Sage?”

It doesn’t take much effort to locate her; that small flicker of warmth against his mind that’s become second nature for him to pick out amidst the chaos of the waking world. “Gathering stones by the river.”

There’s an impish gleam in her eyes now when she turns them towards him. “An hour of peace to ourselves? Imagine that.”

“You overestimate her patience,” Solas says, but he’s already getting to his feet.

Ellana shrugs, and makes a small noise of struggle when he helps her out of the chair. “Maybe. But it’s about to become a lot more crowded in this cottage, and I’m determined to make the best of whatever moments we get.”

She speaks with such surety, it’s tempting to bury his concerns for good and think only ahead – past the birth, to the two cribs sitting under their roof, and the small shapes that will fill them.

And his silence must truly speak louder than his words, because when she looks at him next it’s clear that she knows what he’s still thinking.

“It will be alright, Solas,” she says, winding her fingers through his. “We’ll be alright. All of us.”

There are familiar words of caution at the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t speak them. Fatalism is in his nature, but it’s not in hers, and he would keep it that way.

And so, “May it be so,” he murmurs a kiss against her brow; a trembling sigh sketching across her cheeks. And it’s not the confidence she truly desires, he knows, but it’s something _._ For someone who’s lived as long as he, who’s seen as much and lost as much as he, it’s the most he can give.

But then, she’s never once asked him for anything more.


	4. sprigs and sprouts

Something is happening.

The air has been strange all morning – she can’t explain it, the heaviness, but she  _feels_  it, in papae’s too-quick steps, and mamae’s silence. There’s no laughter over breakfast, and mamae’s hair is curling, dark and damp like she’s had a bath.

“I think you should get Marta,” mamae says when they’re done, but she hasn’t touched her food, even though she always says it’s important to eat it all. And there’s tea in papae’s cup.  _Strange._

Papae doesn’t answer, and when he rises from his chair Sage wants to ask  _where are you going, papae,_  but bites back the words. He places a kiss to the top of her head, and then he’s out the door – like he’s going on one of his journeys, but he doesn’t bring a pack, or his staff. Curious, she follows him down the path – as far from the cottage as she’s allowed to go but no further, and she watches from behind the old oak as he disappears between the trees, towards the village mamae takes her once a week. She waits to see if he’ll return, but he’s gone so  _long_ , and so she goes to the river instead; dips her feet in the water and finds a pretty stone to give to mamae later, one that’s brown with white spots, and she hides it in her pocket so she doesn’t lose it. On her way back she picks flowers in the garden – buttercups and snapdragons, and the one that’s hers,  _Sage’s sage_.

The sun has turned the grass dappled with light when papae returns, along with a tall human Sage has seen many times before, a woman called Marta who brings her sweets, but there are no sweets today; no pockets turned out to yield small treasures. They talk quietly, as adults do, and Sage crouches by the corner of the door, listening. Her hand curls around the stone in her pocket, round and smooth. Her chest feels like it’s filled with stones, and she doesn’t know why.

Mamae goes to bed early. Papae walks in and out of the room. A touch to her head in passing, dragging an errant curl from the flower crown she’d weaved (she’d meant to give it to mamae, but now mamae has gone to bed, and what is she to do?). But he doesn’t stop to talk, or even to smile, and the Heaviness gets worse as the sun goes down beyond the windows, and no one’s come by to tuck her into bed.

Then, mamae starts screaming.

It’s an awful sound, and she’s never heard mamae sound like that; the screams too loud for their small cottage. She curls in on herself, tucks her nose into her knees and covers her ears with her shaking hands, but she can’t keep out the noise. Like the summer thunderstorms, it rattles against her head, and despite her efforts (she is brave, she is brave,  _she is brave_ ), there are tears pressing against her eyes; running down her cheeks to soak her dress.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, but suddenly there’s a hand on her head, tangling in the flowers, and papae is kneeling before her.

“Da’vhenan,” he says. He wipes her tears, but they won’t stop coming. “Ir abelas. We have not forgotten you.”

A sniffle, and she wipes her nose on her sleeve. “What’s wrong with mamae?”

Papae smiles, even though she thinks he shouldn’t. Not when mamae is screaming.

“It is time for your siblings to arrive,” he says. Inside the room, mamae shouts something – a Bad Word, like auntie Sera uses, but it’s  _not allowed under their roof_ , mamae has said, but now mamae is using it under the roof, and it’s not a laughing word, like when auntie Sera says it.

“I don’t like it,” Sage says. Her voice trembles. She doesn’t want to cry (she is  _brave_ ) but she can’t stop. “They can stay. I don’t want them.”

Papae laughs. “If they are like your mamae, they will come whether you like it or not.”

She fiddles with the hem of her dress. She’s gotten it dirty again, playing in the garden. “Mamae is hurting.”

He nods. “But Mamae is strong.” A pause, and then, “She has had worse pains.”

Sage looks up. She tries to imagine, but can’t, and papae doesn’t say what kind of pains, and she doesn’t want to ask (not really, but maybe a little). Instead he says, “It will be over soon.”

She nods, like she understands, though she doesn’t, not really.  _Soon_  is an adult word – soon is the first fall of snow in the winter, and uncle Varric’s visits. Soon isn’t certain, not like her nameday, which mamae marks on the calendar, but papae looks certain when he says it, even when they can both hear mamae’s screams and Bad Words.

“I’m tired,” she says then. She doesn’t want to say it – she wants to be awake when  _soon_  happens, even if she doesn’t really want her siblings, but her eyelids feel heavy, and crying has made her sleepy.

Hands beneath her arms then, and when papae lifts her she doesn’t protest, even though she wants to stay by the door. She doesn’t want to miss it, but she’s so  _tired_ , and mamae wouldn’t mind if she closed her eyes for a little bit, Sage thinks. And papae is warm and solid, and the Heaviness doesn’t feel so heavy now. The stones in her chest don’t seem to bother him when he carries her.

She wants to ask if he can count her freckles but what comes out is a yawn, and she’s asleep before she can finish the thought.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He finds her later, sleeping on the sofa where he’d left her, curled against one side with her legs tucked beneath her and her flower crown askew. Her curls are a tangled chaos, but her breathing is steady and deep. A good exhaustion, and a sleep well deserved. He’s almost loath to wake her.

Solas takes a seat on the sofa, the pillows dipping beneath his weight. “Sage,” he says, with a tender touch to a sleep-slackened brow. A small noise escapes, lost against the pillow. “Da’vhenan.”

She wakes like her mother – reluctantly, and with a good deal of fuss. Blinking bleary eyes open, her brows furrow in confusion as she realizes she’s not in her room.

Solas smiles. “It is time to meet your brothers.”

Sage blinks – once, twice. Then, reaches small hands towards him, a silent question that he answers by slipping his own beneath her arms. And it’s with small, dearly familiar movements that she lays her head against his shoulder; buries small hands in his shirt and presses her nose into the juncture of his neck, along with a string of words he doesn’t catch. When he rises from the sofa a stone falls from her pocket, rolling across the floor, and he can only shake his head fondly when she mutters sleepily, “’s a gift.”

“Oh, that’s a tired face,” Ellana says as he steps into the bedroom. Marta has retired for the night, but despite her ordeal his wife is still awake, seated and propped against the pillows. “We could have waited until morning to show her,” she tells him, but she’s reaching for her daughter even before he’s placed her on the bed, pulling her against her chest in a one-armed embrace that their girl returns with both of her own. “Hello, sweetling,” she kisses the endearment against her temple, and another, silent one against the sharp tip of a small ear.

Sage murmurs, the words too low for Solas to hear, but Ellana’s expression softens. “No, I’m not in pain anymore.” Running a hand through her daughter’s hair, she presses her nose against it. “And anyway, it’s a pain worth enduring.”

“Dunno what that means,” Sage mumbles, and Ellana laughs.

“One day you will, I think.” Then, with a kiss against a freckled cheek, “Would you like to meet your new brothers?”

A pause – long and laden, and Solas wonders if she might refuse (she is her mother’s daughter, and the thought is not beyond believing), before she nods. At Ellana’s look he moves to the cribs, for there are two now – the first was Sage’s once, a lovely thing with curling vines carved into the dark wood. The second is plainer (its maker had had less time, on account of the sudden news that there would be  _two_ ), but it’s no less sturdy, and as much a testament to the craftsmanship of the man who’d made it as the first. And within each lies a swaddled bundle, fast asleep.

He lifts the first – the eldest by a scant few minutes, before moving towards the bed. Having moved off her mother’s lap to sit beside her, Sage watches as Solas places the small shape in the crook of Ellana’s arm.

“This is Rowan,” she says, palm curling around a small head, dusted in tufts of russet hair.

Grey eyes watch, round and alert. Then, “Like the berries?”

Ellana laughs. “Yes, like the berries.”

Turning back to the cribs, Solas lifts their second son, a small noise issuing at the movement, before he falls silent. “And this is Mal,” he says, taking a seat on the bed. The babe is small – smaller even, than Sage had been, the curve of his head impossibly slight against his palm. “Samahl,” he adds, giving Ellana a look. “And I suspect Varric will have a good laugh at that,” he says beneath his breath, to which she only grins.

Sage looks between her brothers, brows furrowing. “He’s different.”

“Twins look alike, but are not always identical,” Solas explains.

Her nose wrinkles, and she turns her head to say something against her mother’s ear, which pulls a startled laugh from Ellana, nearly waking the babes, but Mal only makes a soft noise before he settles once more. “Before you judge, my love, you should know that  _you_  looked like a nug, too, when you were new. Pink and soft and wrinkled, and utterly wonderful.”

Sage looks to Solas for confirmation, expression conveying her disbelief.

“The prettiest nug in all of Thedas,” he says, but where he expects indignation he gets a giggle, a bright and living sounds that loosens some of the tension in his shoulders that’s been festering all day. The very smallest of reminders, perhaps, but great in its magnitude, that all is well.

It doesn’t take Sage long to fall asleep, tucked against her mother’s side. The hour is late, the greying dawnlight creeping in through the window, reminding him that there is a world outside the reach of their little cottage, though today his world has been a single room.

“We did this,” Ellana says, voice a low murmur, thick with tender awe. Then, with an even thicker, half-delirious laugh, “I’m so tired.”

Solas leans towards her, careful not to jostle any of the children ( _their children_ , he thinks, his awe no less than hers), and, “Sleep, vhenan,” he says, speaking the words against her brow; against her hair, still curling with sweat. And he feels her exhaustion in the way she sinks against the mattress. The last time he’d seen her like this she’d looked so small – alone against the pillows, the bedding bleeding red (a harder birth than this, she was, their first, stubborn sprout). Now, with her daughter beside her and her son in the curve of her arm, she does not look small. Their legacy in her one-armed embrace, and in his, and the fact that it’s too much for either of them to bear alone is a marvel in and of itself.

He places his son back in his crib. A few heartbeats younger than his brother, though a little bigger, and with brown hair and round, rosy cheeks. His own colouring, Solas knows, and a rarity in a house full of bright, sunset red. Then, removing him from his mother’s gentle grip, his second follows suit, quiet where his brother fusses.

He counts a freckle – the barest of marks, above a small, pursed mouth. There are more to come, he thinks. Years and freckles and heartbeats, and it’s almost too much to believe, too much to wrap his mind around, these small shapes and their infinite worth. There is more to come, and for someone who had once dedicated himself to Death there is perhaps no greater gift than the knowledge that he will live to see his legacy unfold.

No greater, save perhaps the four heartbeats that remind him the choice was  _his_ , and that in the end, he chose the right path to walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> samahl: laugh; laughter


	5. legacy

The twins are a good few months old, and the first of the winter’s frost has claimed the boughs of their green garden, when Varric comes to visit.

It causes a small uproar – draws an endless string of chatter from his usuallyreserved daughter that leaves little room for silence, though with three children beneath its roof their cottage has not known _quiet_ for some time. And Varric takes the attention in stride, never so much himself as when there are hands tugging at his, asking for stories – for fanciful half-truths to fill in the gaps left to keep a young heart young, if only for a little while longer.

They’re sitting by the hearth, the cold creeping through the floorboards held back by the ring of heat from the fire lapping at the logs. Sage has claimed her usual spot on Varric’s knee, and for the first time since his arrival – a small detail forgotten with the numberless questions that had assaulted him halfway down the garden path – the time has at long last come for introductions. Ellana has retired to the sofa, sprawled without dignity across the cushions in a near unshakable sleep, and so the task has fallen to Solas.

The response is…not wholly unexpected.

“Let me get this straight,” Varric says, a smile breaking out across a wearied face; laughter winking in kind eyes straining in the fire-lit dark, to echo on his breath. “You named your kid  _Chuckles_?”

Seated in his chair across from the hearth, Solas smiles. In the crook of his arm, Mal slumbers; his brother in a wicker basket by his feet. “In a manner of speaking.  _Samahl_  is laughter. His disposition has proven the name a fitting choice.”

“Didn’t get that from _you_ , then,” Varric quips, but he’s grinning even as he says it, the words not as hard as they once were, not near so jeering, and Solas’ smile widens in turn.

“And how is your little one? The last I heard she was walking.”

He grins. “Walking and causing trouble. One’s usually connected to the other,” he says. “Cub’s going to be a scrawny thing, but then with her mother, I’m not surprised. That’s the thing about kids – they get the little things, not the big burdens, unless you force it on them. Shit, but that’s something to be thankful for,” he laughs, but despite his previously good humour, the remark turns his laughter a stark, mirthless sound.

Sage looks up, tilting her head back to look at him; one honorary uncle among many, though perhaps an unabashed favourite. “That’s not allowed,” she says, entirely serious in the way only children truly manage.

“Your mother’s asleep, Freckles. What she can’t hear won’t kill her.” He gives Solas a look. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

Solas only smiles, but the dwarf’s words have stirred something; an old thought that has proven hard to shake, and his smile feels suddenly brittle. “You do not wish for your daughter to inherit your legacy? You have much to pass down.”

He’s awarded with a snort. “Legacy is just a nice way of saying ‘all your crap’.” At Sage’s pursed lips, he only pats the top of her head. “And she’s got more than enough from me where that’s concerned, conniving little thing that she is, but she’s cute, so she gets away with it,” he adds fondly, before shaking his head, “But there’s a lot of shit on the Tethras side she doesn’t need, and won’t get if she’s lucky. Good riddance.”

Solas finds he cannot argue with that, though it’s far too early to see just who their children will truly take after. Sage has many  _little things_ , as Varric had called them – the sharp cut of her ears and the pronounced dimple in her chin his; her fiery curls and the smattering of freckles across her cheeks Ellana’s. Rowan will be his sister’s like in looks, Solas suspects, if not also in nature. A serious child with a curious, deeply searching gaze.

As for Mal, Solas cannot say. There is a feeling; an inkling of future rebellion in his nature, unusually quick to laugh but quicker still to frown. Strong-feeling in all things, good and bad, and perhaps Ellana had felt it, too, and thought the name a good omen. Not a mantle to bear but a reminder, that for laughter to prevail in a hard world, it requires a strong heart.

He sleeps now, a warm weight in the curve of his arm. Not a flicker of red in his hair but an undeniable charm in the smiling tilt of his full mouth, and there is future trouble brewing in stormcloud eyes, shut now, but Solas can select the exact colour from his memory without effort.

When he looks up it’s to find Varric watching him, a knowing look in eyes that have seen more than his cheerful demeanour suggests. “Hard not to think about it,” he says, and does not specify what, but Solas hears the words as clearly as if he’d spoken them. What else has he passed down but his little things, that only the future will show?

A gentle but insistent tug at his shirt, and Varric turns his attention to the girl perched on his knee.

“It would seem there is competition for your attention,” Solas says, as Sage climbs up to offer a secret into Varric’s ear, in a child’s attempt a a whisper,

“Mal is  _loud_.”

“Babies are loud,” Varric counters. “Better get used to it.”

She frowns. “I like it quiet.”

He gives Solas a look. “I don’t know about the other two, but I think it’s safe to say this one’s yours, Chuckles.”

“She is wholly her own,” Solas says, with a small smile. “But I suppose you are right.” Then, “Not all legacies are damning ones.”

Varric has no quick comeback for that, only a wistful smile that says more than his words; more than his greying hair, and the ever-deepening lines at the corners of his eyes. The Viscount’s crown does not rest on his brow now, but the weight of it remains, even in its absence. The weight of a city he holds dearer than most things, save the obvious.

“So,” he says then, as though shaking loose some stray, clinging thought. “How are you two holding up?” He spares a glance towards the shape on the sofa. “Dimples is looking a little worse for wear.” Ellana hasn’t so much as twitched in her sleep, but then it’s been weeks since she last slept through the night.

Solas’ smile bears a new father’s rueful humour. “Twins are–”

“A handful?” Varric interjects, with a quick grin.

“–a challenge,” he finishes. “And I would advise you not to let her hear you say that, either. The current state of her patience does not allow for ill-timed humour.”

“I heard it,” comes the half-slurred mumble from across the room, her voice rough with exhaustion but not unkind. “And I’d wrangle you both to the floor if I wasn’t so tired, one arm be damned.”

“Mamae said a bad word,” Sage observes.

“I’ve heard her say worse,” Varric mutters under his breath. Grey eyes go wide, and he clears his throat with a chuckle. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

She seems to think about that, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “How old?”

Varric grins. “Old enough to know better than to ask me about it.”

Confusion flickers across her features, pulling her brows into a frown, but Varric only laughs. “Tell you what, kid,” he says. “One day when you’ve grown past my knee, I’ll buy you a drink, and I’ll tell you the story of the time your old lady broke her wrist arm-wrestling a highwayman for a hart. Pretty sure there’s a lot of life lessons to be found there. Or cautionary tales, anyway. Still not as bad as Hawke, but then she set the bar pretty high.” He shakes his head. “Word to the wise, Freckles – don’t do bargains with dragons. Or demons. Or shady-looking Chantry sisters who lurk along the docks. Never ends well.”

She seems to ponder the words, and Solas can see the swift passage of her thoughts behind her eyes, wide with wonder. There are many such tales to be told, he knows, both good and bad, and such is the endless curiosity of children, that when coupled with enough determination, there are few things that can be kept under wraps forever. Some truths will have to be told, at one point or another, lest they discover them for themselves.

Still. They have a few more years of innocence left before certain bridges need crossing.

Mal makes a noise then – a familiar murmur of discontent promising far louder complaints. From the sofa drifts a groan, but before she can rise, Solas says, “I will take him.”

“The joys of parenthood,” Varric muses, as Solas rises from his seat. In the basket, Rowan sleep, blessedly undisturbed by his brother’s fussing. “Shit, I still find it hard to believe. Wasn’t exactly on my list of plans.”

“Nor mine,” Solas agrees, lifting the small weight against his chest, above his heart. The fussing continues, small noises that are deceptive in their softness, but dear all the same.

“Worth it, though, in the end?”

As he makes towards the bedroom, his son crying in earnest now, small form held against his shoulder, Solas looks back at their warm hearth; the beckoning fire, and the quiet. An hour of pacing and patient rocking awaits – less if his luck is with him, more if it’s not, and Mal’s stubbornness taken into consideration, the latter is the more likely outcome.

But despite it all, there’s not a shred of doubt in his heart when he tosses the remark over his shoulder, pressing a smile against the soft skin of a small brow, creased with dissatisfaction,

“More than I can put into words.” 


	6. wilful weeds

They’ve both made this journey before, across the gently swelling highlands towards the familiar line of trees in the distance. The smoke from the village nearby rises towards a an ever-stretching sky, but where the path forks they turn left – away from the well-trod road and the thatched roofs dotting the bottom of the steep hill, far below. He hears the running river before they see it, carving a meandering path through the greenery, and it’s with a wearied but pleased sigh that he comes to a stop at the top of the rise overlooking the water.

On the riverbank a small shape startles to attention at their approach, and he catches a burst of fiery red against the brilliant, dappled green of the grass before she turns and bolts – picks up her bare feet and scrambles up the slope at such a pace she’s cleared the top of it before he’s had the chance to so much as open his mouth.

Walking up from behind him, Sera offers a grin. “Beard must’ve scared her off.”

“She’s seen my beard before,” Thom reminds her, perplexed by the sudden departure.

Sera gives a great shrug, before she sets off down the slope, making towards the shallow part of the river to wade across. “She’s a little thing. Little things forget. Memory’s too short, or whatever. Bet you she doesn’t remember me neither.”

He doesn’t have a response to that, but considers her words as he follows her down towards the water. The late spring showers have melted the ice and snow left from the long winter, but the river is still a shock of cold against his legs, sloshing into his boots, but he pays it no mind.

Sera is waiting for him on the riverbank, wringing water from one of her shoes. “They still got that itsy-bitsy cottage?”

“I should guess so,” he says, as they set to climbing the rise. “What else do you reckon they’d have, a sky palace?”

“Ha _ha,_ ” she snorts. “I just mean, they’re five now, yeah? Place’ll get cramped real fast when the twinsies start running around.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I’ll ask if they need a hand building an annex. Might stick around for a while, now that I’m here.”

Sera hums, though Thom can’t tell if it’s in agreement or just by way of an answer, but they’re approaching the cottage now – he picks it out with ease from between the trees; recognizes the familiar little garden with its flowerbeds, the climbing roses on the wall stretching towards the turf roof, and the windowsills overgrowing with herbs.

As they’re walking up the path, Solas exits the door at the back, a small shape on his heels, never more than half a step behind. Little hands grab for the fabric of his trousers, and when he comes to a stop, the figure attaches itself to the backs of his legs. And then Ellana is in the doorway, a healthy flush to her cheeks, and devoid of the heavy burden Thom remembers from his last visit.

“Thom!” she greets, with that easy affection that has never lessened, and that he’d once thought himself undeserving. But it’s a strong and stubborn heart that refuses to relent, the way hers had. She’d not given up on him, like she’d not given up on the one at her back, who stands before their cottage with the ease of someone who was once restless, but who has made a home for himself at long last.

Thom has long since learned to recognize that look. It took years to find it in his own reflection, after all.

She’s jogging towards him, and her embrace is as he remembers – one-armed or not, it’s stronger than her figure suggests, and she still laughs like a girl when he hoists her up to spin her around.

Placing her feet back on her feet, she’s still laughing when, catching sight of his companion, she exclaims with delight, “ _Sera_?”

Another embrace, and Sera says something that Thom doesn’t catch but that tears a deep-bellied laugh from Ellana’s mouth, loud enough to make a startled bird take off from a nearby tree.

“Don’t say that too loud,” she warns as she pulls back, dropping her voice to a murmur, though her smile doesn’t falter. “There are young ears here, and a very quick tongue. She picks up things faster than you’d think.”

Sera steals a glance at Solas, wicked grin widening. “Oh, I’ll bet there’s quick tongues about.”

“ _Sera_ ,” Ellana sighs, but it’s an entirely fond sound, and accompanied by a laugh that reminds Thom of long nights in an old Keep, with a deck of cards between them and a table full of empty pints.

Much to Thom’s surprise, Solas only smiles. “It is good to see you both.”

“Whos’at hiding behind your legs, Solas?” Sera asks, tilting her head, as though to get a better look. “Swear I’ve seen her before.”

“Sage,” Solas says with a laughing sigh, glancing down. “You have no reason to hide – you know Thom and Sera.”

The girl doesn’t budge, but steals a glance from behind her father’s knees. She’s an inch taller than Thom remembers, and her hair has grown – an unruly mop of sun-touched red, curling above round, freckled cheeks.

He kneels down, offering what he hopes is a disarming smile. “Don’t you remember me?”

She seems to think about it, bottom lip sucked in between her teeth, and a pensive furrow to her brow that is entirely her father’s. Then, after due consideration, she offers a small nod. “Hello.”

Ellana shakes her head. “Varric was just here a few months ago and she could hardly keep still,” she says, the words directed at her daughter. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”

Sage mumbles something, tucking her head against the backs of Solas’ knees, and Thom feels his grin widen. There’s something strangely charming about the contrariness of children; the ever-shifting moods of a young heart that hasn’t had time to settle.

“Sooo, where’s the twinsies?” Sera asks, making a show of looking into the cottage behind them.

“Napping,” Ellana explains, to which Sera blows a raspberry, and is awarded a look. “And you wouldn’t be making that sound if you knew just how rare it is for both of them to be napping at the same time.”

“What did you have this time?” Thom asks, rising to his feet. “More girls?”

“Boys, actually,” Ellana says, with a smile. “And as different as two boys can be, although I wouldn’t have them any other way.”

He laughs. “Figures it was about time for a troublemaker, after this one,” he says, with a wink at Sage, who ducks back behind her father’s legs.

“And Mal will be that and more,” Ellana says, with a fond, if slightly desperate laugh. “I have no doubt.”

Sera grins. “I like him already.”

A small noise then, and Sage pulls away from her hiding place, bolting past them and down the path towards the river. Ellana sighs, but to Thom’s surprise, doesn’t call after her daughter.

“What’s that about?” Sera asks, brows furrowing.

“The twins,” Solas says, looking in the direction of the river. “She feels left out,” he explains, at Sera’s raised brow. “It is not always easy, to find yourself no longer at the centre of attention.” A torn father’s indecision sits in the tense press of his shoulders, but he doesn’t move to follow the girl.

“If she’s not back before supper I’m going to go fetch her,” Ellana says, mouth pursed with concern.

A touch to her arm, nudging her towards the door. “She will be back,” Solas says, with a calm that tells Thom this isn’t the first time this has happened. “Let us go inside,” he adds. “You have come a long way.”

Sera exclaims a dire need of the privy, luring a laugh past Ellana’s worry, but Thom offers a last glance at the garden path, looking for a flicker of red, before following the others inside.

He mulls over the thought for the rest of the afternoon, and after supper, goes off into the woods, under the pretence of needing to stretch his legs. Sera is on the floor with the youngins, and offers him only a curious look as he departs, but says nothing, and continues making faces at the boys to draw their attention away from his retreat. Sage is curled in her father’s lap, unnervingly silent as she watches her brothers play, and doesn’t spare Thom a second glance.

He walks for a while, axe in hand and a plan forming in his mind – an image, and with it, the knowledge of what he needs. It’s a familiar exercise, and he knows what to look for, but the sun has dipped down behind the trees by the time he returns to the cottage, a sturdy piece of wood tucked securely under one arm. He spends an hour in the garden with the axe, getting the shape right; the rough groundwork, and he knows the motions by heart and muscle-memory, having made a dozen similar pieces in the past, though none for a child as dear as this one.

Their hosts have retired to bed when he steps back inside, but Sera sits before the fire whittling arrows for her bow, and he settles down beside her to work on his own project.

“Haven’t seen you make one of those in a while,” she observes.

Thom smiles, the soft _thack-thack_ - _thack_ of his hammer and chisel a steady rhythm in the night’s quiet. The children haven’t stirred, though they’ve both been warned that they might.

“This one is a little different,” is all he says, leaving it at that, and Sera doesn’t ask, but her eyes drift more and more from the arrows in her lap, until she’s given up the venture altogether in favour of pointing out suggestions – _‘Little to the left. Right. Lefty-right. That needs to be sharper – not_ that _sharp, her eye’ll pop out. Whassat supposed to be? OH, right, nevermind’ –_ until sleep claims her, and Thom deposits her on the sofa, before retiring to the guest room for a few hours of rest.

The next morning he’s up before the sun, making a fire in the hearth, and is whittling away long before the creak of well-worn floorboards announce the other rising souls beneath the cottage roof. One of the boys makes his need known with a sharp, cutting wail, followed by his brother in kind, and then their parents are awake and walking past Thom, each carrying a screaming child.

“Good morning,” Solas greets, the words tinged with tiredness, but he spares a curious glance at what he’s doing, before his attention is claimed by the toddler on his arm. Thom returns the sentiment with a nod, and Sera groans from the sofa, a word that could just as well be a greeting as a curse.

The light patter of small feet makes his eyes lift, to find Sage reeling to a halt in the doorway, as though unprepared for the sight that greets her. She lingers behind the doorstep, curiosity a bright thing in a young face, and he has to duck his head to hide his smile.

“What’s that?” she asks then, voice quiet, and pointing a small finger towards the object in question. She hasn’t taken a single step towards him, but he can see her teetering, rubbing a bare toe against a crack in the floor.

“It’s a rocking horse,” he says, giving it a fond pat. True to its name, it rocks forward gently, then back. “Well, a rocking halla,” he adds, running a fingertip along the branching antlers. It will need some polishing before it’s done, but the silhouette is unmistakable. “I thought you might like it.”

A small gasp, and wide-sprung eyes. “For me?”

He grins; moustache lifting at the sight of her unbridled surprise. “Just for you.”

She hesitates, then – sprints across the room, before she comes to a stop before the halla. She doesn’t reach out to touch it, but meets his eyes, a silent question asked, and at his nod plump fingers lift to tentatively touch a curved horn.

Her gasp is the smallest sound of wonder, before a smile blossoms, a wide, toothy thing that steals his breath right from his lungs–

–and then there are arms sneaking around his neck, a very gentle embrace that is half-trepidation, half-politeness and entirely endearing, and it lasts only a second before she’s back with the halla. “Mamae, mamae!”

Looking up, it’s to find Solas and Ellana in the doorway, watching the spectacle unfold. One of the boys have quieted, sitting soundly on his mother’s hip – the other is babbling a seamless string of wordless sounds, and trying his hardest to climb out of his father’s arms.

“I see it, da’vhenan,” she says, smiling. Then, in a voice thick with gratitude, “Thank you, Thom.”

“My pleasure.” Rising from his seat, he walks past the halla, and when he makes to ruffle her hair, Sage doesn’t so much as flinch, only looks up with that toothy grin. “She’s a sweet girl.”

One of the boys gives a laughing _shriek_ , and Solas curses something under his breath – something elvhen that Thom has definitely heard before and knows means something entirely unsuitable for _young ears and quick tongues_ , but the girl’s too preoccupied with the halla to make note as her father tries to keep her brother from scrambling out of his grip. “ _Samahl_ ,” he chides softly.

“Should make a pen next,” Sera says as she saunters up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “That one looks like he might need it.”

“I’d be outraged if I wasn’t also inclined to agree with you,” Ellana says dryly, turning towards where Mal is waving his arms with a toothless grin. “Yes, I see you, too, da’assan.”

There’s a tug at his trouser leg then, and Thom looks down to find a pair of large grey eyes looking up.

“Thom,” Sage says, with a seriousness that sounds so wildly out of place coming from the mouth of a child, it makes his eyes widen.

“Yes?”

She gives another tug, and taking it as a sign that he should bend down, he does so, until she can murmur her request against his ear.

Thom looks at Ellana, and has to concentrate so as not to smile. “Can she ride it?”

Her mother rolls her eyes. “Something tells me you two will be thick as thieves before the sun is down,” she says, as Sage tries to draw him back to the rocking halla. “And of course she can, although I don’t think my word could stop her. Not when she has _that_ look on her face.”

Sera gives Solas’ shoulder a poke. “Need a breather before your back gives out?” But Mal is already reaching out his arms, and before Solas can muster an answer his son has changed hands. “Go have some of that tea you hate,” she adds with a grin, quick fingers finding ticklish spots, and luring giggles from behind grinning, toothless gums.

“He can be a chal–”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve handled _you_ before, you know. How hard could this one be? He’s not even talking.” She grins, then heaves the boy onto her hip with an exaggerated gesture that draws a trilling peal of laughter from his lips. “Don’t worry, he’ll still be elfy when I’m done with him. Trust me, yeah?”

Solas’ sigh is one of old exasperation, but lets her take the boy, which probably says more than whatever words of trust he might have offered.

“Papae!” The delighted exclamation draws his gaze to where his daughter sits, perched on the rocking halla, and the smile that curves at the sight chases the exhaustion from his face. “Look!”

“A fitting mount for a brave knight,” Solas says, and she beams, bright under their collective gazes, but perhaps even more so under this particular gaze, and Sera doesn’t miss Thom’s look of gratitude.

“So,” Thom says then, from where he’s kneeling beside the rocking halla, and the girl seated atop it now, holding onto the antlers with the care he’d advised, lest she get splinters. She’s speaking – a rapid tide of words that he can barely keep up with, some of them in a language he doesn’t even speak, and the others hard to hear over her brother’s laughter. There’s a terrible and wonderful chaos about the room, filled with more honest noise and life than he’d ever thought would be part of his future but that is, now, and irrevocably so, going by the little hand that keeps tugging at his shirt for attention.

He finds Ellana’s curious gaze, cheek resting against the top of a small head, tucked against her shoulder. Solas presses a kiss to her brow, a tender gesture and a rare, public sight, which says a great deal about what they are now – all of them, compared to what they once were. Strangers beneath old stone, fighting for two different worlds.

It’s just the one world now, but it’s one where he’s grown comfortable enough to claim a space for himself, and to ask, grin widening,

“Have you two considered adding an annex?”


	7. fire's heart

The spring the twins turn two is an unusually cold spring, heavy showers of rain following right at the heels of the winter’s grip, washing away the ice and snow but leaving the valley in a freezing, watery clutch. The river overflows, and heavy puddles line the path to the cottage, much to the elation of a young heart stubbornly intent on jumping in each and every one.

The spring the twins turn two is a spring spent chasing after two more pairs of running feet, to keep them within the dry safety of the cottage. Between them they only have three arms and two pairs of eyes, and it’s not always easy, keeping track of their small brood, but they manage. They have fought worse battles than this.

But the spring the twins turn two is the spring Sage falls sick.

 

* * *

 

It starts with a sniffle and they think nothing of it, but the sniffles soon turns to coughs – soft ones at first, then harder, racking things from deep within, and he feels the way they tear through her; feels the ripples under the palm pressed to her back, and the hot tears of pain that fall against his throat as he holds her.

She loses her appetite – refuses to eat, and this is where her mother summons the authority that had once laid Thedas at her feet. But through the stern pull of her features Solas spots the fear that lurks; that makes her hand shake, fingers white-knuckled where they curl around the edge of the kitchen table, bearing her weight when her knees buckle and she thinks he isn’t looking.

They tuck her into bed; make sure she’s warm, even as the damp cold from outside seeps through the walls. And she’s the smallest he has ever seen her, skin sallow and pale beneath her freckles, and the coughs that rip from her chest seem too great for such a slight shape.

 _We’ll wait for it to pass_ , they agree, but the days crawl by and the coughing only gets worse, along with a fever that grips with such persistence, they’re afraid to leave her alone at night.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Ellana asks one evening, voice raw with exhaustion. They’ve tried secluding the twins in the annex to keep them from catching whatever ails their sister; have tried to divide their attention between Sage and the boys, but it’s wearing on them both.

Solas pulls her towards him – winds his arms around her familiar shape, to tuck his nose against her hair, and sigh a wordless apology into the embrace. There are spells to knit bone and tissue; to help blood clot and to draw poison from infected wounds, but there is no magic he knows, past or present, that can cure an illness like this. He has torn through every tome in his possession – has sent word to Minrathous, to Val Royeaux, but there is nothing to be done – no gods to heed desperate prayers, and no spirits to give him counsel other than _some things must run their course. Persevere._

“No,” he says, his grip tightening around her; bearing her weight where she leans on him, because it’s the only thing he can do. He’s never handled ineptitude well; has never had the patience to trust in powers greater than his own, because chance is too fickle a thing to hinge your faith on.

Their daughter sleeps on, her rough, wheezing breaths the only sound in the small room, save Ellana’s heartbeats. But at least she breathes, still. There is hope in that.

And the only thing left for them to do is wait.

 

* * *

 

A long week crawls by. The rain hammers against the windowsill and the flower pots, but there’s no soil fit for the herbs to thrive, overrunning with water. He hears the drum against the roof; loses himself in the sound. It’s a weak comfort, much like Sage’s small, keening breaths.

“Solas.”

He looks up to find Ellana in the doorway, Rowan slumbering against her breast, arms loose around her neck. “Ma’arlath, you need to sleep,” she says. “I’ll take over from here. I’ll wake you if–”

“I will stay,” he cuts her off, resolute. “If you do not mind.”

She looks like she wants to protest, but says nothing. And he’s knows it’s selfish, claiming this responsibility as his own. The boys are no less important, no less dear to his heart, but just the thought of moving from his daughter’s side seems impossible. What if–

“You know I wouldn’t,” Ellana says softly, shifting her grip on their son. “But you need to rest.”

When he doesn’t answer, her sigh falls, heavy with silent grief. “I’ll put Rowan to bed. You’re welcome to join me, after.”

She pauses by the door, and he thinks she might say something else, but when he looks up she’s gone, and he hears her retreating footsteps; the familiar creaking of the floorboards under her weight. A wash of eerie silence lies over the cottage but for the small nightly noises, and he sinks against the chair, weary from a burden that suddenly feels too much to bear.

Leaning towards the bed, he rests his hand against Sage’s brow, finding it still feverish. She stirs under his touch – a quiet noise of complaint pulling free, before another cough falls from her lips, and the eyes blinking open to meet his are red-rimmed and glassy.

She looks about to say something, but the coughs won’t relent, and when she reaches her arms out he pulls her into his own, settling back against the chair.

And he holds her until she falls asleep again, shaking fingers buried in her hair as she tucks her broken sobs against his chest.

 

* * *

 

A chilly morning three days later there’s a knock on their door, and he’s barely shaken awake from his slumber before he catches the sound of it swinging open, and footsteps – _familiar_ footsteps, in a jaunt too self-assured to be anyone else’s, and–

“ _Fasta vass_ , I didn’t bring the right boots for this blasted country! Have you seen the state of your roads?”

The voice drifts through the walls, although exactly who he’s talking to, Solas doesn’t know, but he’s rising from his chair, taking a moment to check his daughter’s temperature, before moving into the living room just in time to see Dorian stride inside, rain clinging to his oilskin coat and mud to his knees.

He doesn’t bother with undue greetings, pulling something from his satchel – a rolled up piece of cloth, and a small notebook. “Stayed up three nights – can’t trust the novices when they can’t even use the register properly, but I found this–” He taps the notebook, and nudges it towards him, familiar impatience in his stance as Solas slowly reaches to take it.

“Congestion of the chest – the brew will help open the airways. Don’t ask where I got the ingredients, I’d rather not relive the experience, thank-you. The spell is designed–”

“To drain the lungs,” Solas finishes, looking up from the notebook. “There is no conclusive evidence that this works.”

Dorian scoffs. “Not yet, obviously. But between the two of us, I’d give it a day. To work out the kinks – see, I’ve already started on the groundwork. There is _some_ research to be found that’s not been conducted by complete quacks.”

He’s about to respond – fully awake now, his mind has already latched onto the possibility. It’s a dangerous spell, as any spells dealing with infections of the inner organs, and the risk that something may go _wrong_ –

“ _Dorian_?” Rubbing at her eyes, Ellana appears in the doorway, clad in one of his old shirts and looking half-asleep on her feet. “The sun’s not up yet,” she croaks.

“I know,” Dorian chirps. “Dreadful, isn’t it? I had to find my way here in the dark.”

She considers them where they stand – the open notebook held between them, and Dorian’s mud-stained boots. And Solas sees the realization as it comes to settle on her face, and the _hope_ that follows, alighting with a terrible conviction in her eyes. It’s one he recognizes instantly, one that has always been far greater than his own, and dangerous or not, he knows the decision is made before she opens her mouth–

“What do you need us to do?”

 

* * *

 

It’s not a simple procedure, but then he’s lived a long enough to know that the more harmful the ailment, the tougher the cure. He’d thought he’d known how to cure the world, once; had seen it ravaged by sickness, and not thought to see how it thrived, in spite of it hurts.

But he thinks about it now, the things lost – the constitution of the ancient elves, unimaginable now. Their infallible bodies, existing in a world where _disease_ had no definition.

Some days, the unforgiving harshness of _this_ world is almost more than he can take.

Sage throws up the brew on their first attempt. There are fat tears rolling down her cheeks, and her screams are ragged, hurtful things, but Solas has no consolation to offer that will soothe the pain.

He has to hold her down, for Dorian to work the spell. Sweat coats his back; runs rivulets down his temples, and he feels sick at the prospect, struggling to pin down her arms as she trashes against the mattress, and he’s suddenly glad Ellana has taken the boys to the village, if only to spare them the sounds. It’s not a simple procedure, and even less a pleasant one – no healing of this sort ever is, and the contraction of her chest from her screaming only makes it worse, as Dorian makes to drain her lungs.

“Ir abelas, da’vhenan,” he says against her ear as she kicks her feet, wiggling in his grip. Her small features contorting with pain, it takes all his willpower not to look away. And there’s another memory pushing at his mind – another’s screams, and his fingers curled around a hand convulsing with magic, drawing power like poison from her veins and feeling her collapse from the agony–

It feels like hours, though he knows it to be less than even one before Dorian’s hand gives a  _tug_ , and Sage’s screaming is momentarily halted by the fluid pulled from her lungs, up her throat, before he deposits it without ceremony in the small bowl by the bed. And for a moment she seems shocked into silence, before she draws a breath – a rough, grainy rasp, but when it doesn’t leave her coughing, she blinks.

Then, eyes welling with new tears, she curls up with a soft, muffled sob, and he loosens his grip, pulling her close instead, to press his nose against her damp hair. The barest mumble of _papae_ is lost against his shirt, and Solas feels his relief leave him in a shuddering breath.

It doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep in his arms, exhausted from what they’ve put her through, but her breathing sounds better; softer, where it falls against his neck.

“Well,” Dorian says, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his brow. “At least we know _that_ works.” His hands are shaking, Solas notes, but, “Never doubted it for a second, though,” he laughs, the sound too rough for real mirth, before he clears his throat, and makes for the door.

“I hope you’ve got something stronger than tea stashed away in your cupboards,” he announces – then, as though to himself, “Although after that, I’d take a pint of Fereldan piss-ale. _Kaffas._ ”

Solas doesn’t answer – can’t find the words to speak his gratitude or his relief, and it’s a terrible thing, the silence that descends in the wake of his daughter’s screams, but he feels her moving; hears the leap of her pulse and the steady beat of her heart.

And it’s in the quiet that he lets his own tears fall, and teaches himself how to breathe again.

 

* * *

 

To their surprise, Dorian stays.

The first two days it’s to ‘make sure it sticks. I didn’t come all this way to do a piss-poor job’. The next three, when she’s showing clear signs of betterment, he blames on the weather, and spends his afternoons before the fire, conjuring sparks to charm the boys, and lamenting the state of Tevinter’s politics to a constant stream of half-coherent babble that he takes as hearty agreement.

Solas has no complaints. His daughter breathes like she will live, and with the boys properly distracted, he finds a long-sought respite in his wife’s embrace, sketching his affection into her skin, and though there’s not much _sleep_ to be had, her thick, drowsy laughter more than makes up for any lingering exhaustion.

As it is, it’s been well over a week when Dorian declares his intention to go back – that the weather is at long last good enough for travel, at least for the wilful temperament of the South, and that there is business waiting for him in Minrathous.

The morning he prepares to set out, Sage is out of bed, and insists with her mother’s persistence on accompanying them to the door. She’s holding onto the hem of Solas’ trousers, watching the sun slant off the puddles lining the garden path. The pale, golden light catches in her hair, and he watches her small movements, unusually subdued but so much more than they have been, these past two weeks.

A small sniffle, and she wipes her nose on her sleeve. “Uncle Dorian,” she says, quietly. “Are you coming back soon?”

Solas sighs a laugh. “Give him time to leave first, da’vhenan.”

A nose pressed against his hip, and she mumbles the next words into the fabric, “Dun’ want him to leave.”

Dorian laughs. “Something terribly charming about that,” he says, before he fishes something out of his satchel.

Kneeling down, he holds it towards her. “See this?” he asks, tilting the book, in an invitation for her to take it. It’s an old thing, the leather scratched and worn, and the gold lettering along the spine dulled with age, the words barely legible. “My very first spell-book. Mostly used for mischief, but there’s a summoning spell for a very handsome kitten somewhere in it.” He gives Solas a look. “If that is an acceptable summoning, of course. This being a spirit-friendly house.”

A small hand reaches out, tentatively, before she curls her fingers around the small tome, then asks in a breathless voice, “A kitten?”

“Magister Whiskerius. The name is not my brightest invention, I’ll grant you,” he laughs. “But he’s a steadfast companion, as any great mage needs.” He looks up at Solas, then, an odd wistfulness in his smile. “Although I doubt loneliness is an ailment for which you will ever need a cure,” he adds, quietly.

Too young to pick up on the implication, Sage only grins, gaze captured entirely by the book in her hands, and Dorian seems pleased when he rises to his feet.

“Well, then,” he says, lifting his eyes to the sky. “I best be off.”

“Have a safe journey home,” Ellana says, stepping up beside Solas in the doorway, slender arm slipping around his waist.

“I’ll try not to get mauled by a bear,” Dorian quips. “And ah, to live with that fear again! You know, I’ve _almost_ missed the South.”

“Oh off with you!” Ellana laughs. “Or bears will be the least of your problems.”

He makes an exaggerated bow, before turning on his heel, and, “Dorian,” Solas says, stopping him in his tracks. Then – “Ma serannas, falon. _Thank you_.”

There’s a quick grin, but not quick enough to hide the sentiment behind it. “All in a day’s work, Solas. I’ll find something harder for us to cure, next time.”

Despite the gravity of his gratitude, Solas chuckles. “I look forward to the challenge.”

Dorian’s grin widens, before he turns to leave – sets off down the path with a strut better suited for a paved street, and Solas can only shake his head.

A hand touches his arm, and he looks down to find Ellana smiling. “I’ll get started on breakfast. Don’t stay too long – there’s a draft.” Then, with a kiss to his jaw and an affectionate tug at her daughter’s ear, she retreats back into the cottage.

Beneath the arch of the doorway, below the hanging wreaths of dried flowers and herbs decorating the frame, they watch Dorian walking down the path until he’s no more than a shadow between the trees. Despite the spell-book clutched with to her chest, Sage’s grip on his trousers has yet to loosen, and he reaches down to run his fingers through the soft curls of her hair. Behind them there’s a happy shriek of laughter – Mal’s, and Ellana’s own, softer mirth. The patter of small feet racing across the floorboards, and something toppling, to crash against the floor, followed by a long, drawn-out groan that makes the corner of Solas’ mouth lift.

Sage turns, and lets go of him to run towards the kitchen, but stops halfway down the corridor. “Are you coming, papae?” In the light spilling in through the doorway, she’s aglow with red and gold, a small heart of fire, and he’s momentarily caught by the sight.

Then he smiles, and, “I am right behind you, da’vhenan,” he says.

She grins, and then she’s off, red curls bouncing and with Dorian’s book held tightly against her chest. And Solas watches her go, wondering how long until he’ll be in the doorway, watching her disappear down the path and into the wide world.

“I am right behind you,” he murmurs with a sigh, before he moves to follow, letting the door slip shut behind him.

_And may that be the case, if only for a little while longer._


	8. seed pearls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short prelude I wrote to cheer myself up. Shameless, self-indulgent wedding fic, set sometime after Sage's birth and before the first chapter.

There are summer smells in the air, the sweet-tinged caressof herbs and wildflowers she can name by heart (stems, leaves, petals, and their various medicinal properties, an old knowledge ~~–~~  a First’s knowledge, though she’s not a First anymore), and the combination is almost overpowering in the balmy heat. She’s _missed_ this, and yet ~~–~~

There’s no smell of frost on the air; no metallic bite in her nose heralding the coming of snow. The wind doesn’t cut, it kisses, and there are no goosebumps rising on her arms, only a slight sheen of sweat that she dabs from her brow between breaths.

Still, it’s home – _was_ home, though its importance hasn’t lessened by the fact that she’s found more places to call by that name.

Fingers plucking at the fabric of her dress, Ellana frowns. It’s new – a small piece of elsewhere, here among the things she knows, and Vivienne had honoured her wishes. Though not Dalish, the design is a homage to her heritage with its simple, split skirt, and the curling vines and leaves embroidered in the Orlesian silk. It’s lovely, and would have been lovelier still, but for the slightly lopsided look given by her missing arm.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, she pushes the thought aside with a breath, and sets about selecting the flowers for her wreath. No braids – she’d cut it recently, and it curls just below her ears now. Like her arm had in the beginning, the lightness feels unnerving. _Just another thing to get used to_. _A turn in the path, and you’ve been walking for a long, long time._

“I have always been fond of weddings,” Cassandra says, from her seat across the tent. No flowers in her hair, but then Ellana suspects they’d have to physically hold her down to put them in. A wry smile curves along her stern mouth, softening her look. “Do not tell anyone,” she warns. Then ~~–~~ “ _Especially_ Varric.”

Ellana’s grin winks in the small, cracked looking glass sitting at her elbow. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“So you said,” Cassandra snorts. “With the book.”

“He finished _Swords and Shields_ for you, didn’t he?”

“I – suppose.”

Her laugh is a kind laugh, as she sets about weaving the flowers together. Or, tries to, anyhow. She’s practised beforehand, but it’s hard making do with only one hand, even this woefully simple thing that she could have done it her sleep, once.

There’s a rustling by the tent flap, and then Sera is there, grimacing. “Time to crack open the casks soon or what? Bull’s getting antsy.”

“The celebration usually comes after the ceremony, Sera.”

She snorts. “You Dalish and your ceremonies. Blah blah blah, the People this, the People that. I mean have you seen it?” she asks Cassandra. “Garlands and shite. It’s so–”

“Elfy?” Ellana quips, prompting a grin

“Well yeah, but it’s _you,_ so it’s not that elfy, not really. Even if it’s _Solas_.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Ellana hums, before a breath of frustration follows, as the crown comes apart in her hand. “ _Fenedhis_ ,” she snaps, dropping it in her lap.

Hands on her shoulders, then. “Fene-shit, fene-shat.” A giggle. “Aren’t you supposed to be all bright and shiny today?” But before Ellana can open her mouth to speak, “Come on, give it here.”

She blinks, inclining her head with a look of surprise. “Wh– the crown?”

Sera makes a gesture of impatience. “What, you think I can’t do it?”

Wordlessly, she hands over the flowers, barely hanging together, but Sera’s hands are quick, slipping stems together with practised ease as she weaves them to a wreath.

“There,” she says, dropping it on Ellana’s head. “Can’t have you _not_ looking elfy and flowery at your elfy, flowery wedding.”

Touching a careful hand to the flowers, she finds it solid, and sitting snugly around the crown of her head. “I didn’t know you could make wreaths,” she says, not bothering to hide her surprise.

“Quick fingers,” Sera counters, waggling them for emphasis, and smile stretching with impish delight. “Do you know what else I can–”

“ _No_ ,” Cassandra cuts her off from across the tent, cheeks colouring with the knowledge of what would most likely follow. “No one needs to know that.”

Sera only laughs. “Suit yesself.”

Soft footsteps outside the tent, and Solas ducks inside silently, but Sage’s laughter is hard to miss, and when Ellana turns it’s to find a dimple-cheeked smile on her daughter’s face, and a pair of small hands reaching towards her from her place on her father’s arm.

“I was beginning to wonder if you’d lost her in the woods,” she laughs at his approach, holding out a flower for that small hand. Sage holds it up to his nose, the demand clear, and shrieks when he ducks past the flower to press a kiss to her cheek.

“Not for lack of trying, on her part,” Solas says with a wry smile. “Her crawling days are already dearly missed.”

Ellana grins, and though not understanding the source of her father’s tired humour, Sage tucks her head against his shoulder and smiles, kicking her bare feet. At the corner of her eye, Ellana catches Cassandra’s smile and quiet exit. Sera’s grin is a twinge more wicked, but there’s a fond touch to it, before she slips out behind Cassandra.

“Did you put these in?” she asks then, touching a fingertip to the seed pearls woven into their daughter’s hair, little beads of white in the mass of sunset red.

Solas smiles his answer. “Idle hands.”

“Don’t tell me you’re nervous?” she laughs, tucking a stray lock back into Sage’s small bun. It springs back out, like a small, stubborn weed, and she relents with a fond huff, though her hand lingers by the pearls.

“They were my mother’s,” she says, softly. “Papae bought them in Wycome, for her nameday the year I was born. It was the last gift he ever gave her.” Her smile is a worn thing, and her grief a familiar weight after so many years. She carries it with ease, now. “I always thought I’d wear them for my wedding, but my hair is too short now.”

Tears brimming, she grins, meeting his eyes. “I like this better, though.”

Solas lifts a hand to touch her jaw, fingers brushing the tips of her hair. “You are beautiful as you are. That is a truth that will not change.”

“Mam,” Sage says, holding out the flower. Plucking it from her fingers, Ellana tucks it behind the jut of a very small ear, luring a giggle from a grinning mouth.

A touch to the tent flap then, and Keeper Deshanna ducks her head inside. “Emm’asha, it is time.”

Ellana looks at Solas. “This is it.” The words taste strange on her tongue – a finality of sorts to them, though it doesn’t feel like an ending. “Thank you,” she says then, quietly. “I want you to know how much it means. Getting married here, with our traditions. I know they’re not–”

He shakes his head. “I would have you happy,” he says. “More than anything. I do not mind Dalish traditions.” He smiles, the corner of his mouth lifting. “They are their own, no matter what they might have been, once.” A flicker of something ancient in his eyes, but whatever the thought, he doesn’t dwell on it. He does not dwell much at all, these days. “It took a long time for me to see that,” he says instead.

A surge of feeling in her breast, and she can’t speak; has no clever comeback to offer to the magnitude of his confession. _An end of sorts, and yet_ –

She kisses him – balances her weight on the balls of her feet, bare and sinking slightly into the moss underfoot. There’s a fierceness about her affection that had scared her witless, once. Years ago in the biting cold, staring up at a desolate fortress in the cradle of the sky, vast and empty until the minute he’d stepped up beside her, a familiar weight in his presence, and with her next breath the word had settled amidst her worries –

 _Home_.

The tent flap rustles again – an impatient, teasing tug now, and, “I feel I ought to inform you that Varric is about to start a betting pool on whether or not you’ve eloped,” Dorian’s voice drawls from beyond the opening. “I’d like to know if I should add to it.”

Her happiness feels light in her chest, a rare, unburdened joy that makes her forget about her lone arm. Her small aches. “Now then, my husband to be,” she says. “Will you have me for wife?”

A kiss to her brow where her hair curls with perspiration from the heat, and she feels his smile. He doesn’t smell of wildflowers, or cold and frostbit mountains, but she sinks against the kiss; digs her heels into the ground, and thinks  _they’ve earned this peace._

There’s a small pat to her cheek, and Ellana laughs thickly – takes the small hand, to press a kiss of her own to chubby fingers. “And will you behave today, da’vhenan, or will we be fishing you out of a rabbit hole by supper?”

She only receives a giggle in return, and there are worse fates to contend with, she thinks, than unruly children.

Solas holds out his free arm then, and she takes it with the one hand she’s got; tucks her fingers into the crook of his elbow, and when he moves she follows, glad for once to not be the one taking the lead.

Outside the sun is sinking, and there are hummingbirds by the garlands strung up between the aravels, and glass globes with small, curling flames hanging from the branches along the path from the tent. She spies the people gathered – all familiar faces, clan members and friends. A strange convergence of all her worlds. There’s no ceremonial sword in her hand now, and no mage’s staff. No crown on her head but one of flowers, and only two titles to carry. And  _wife_ , Ellana thinks, will be a far lighter mantle to bear than Inquisitor; than Herald.

Sage babbles, a stream of words whose meanings are lost to them still, but she feels them as they walk, and there is perhaps no greater union of worlds than their daughter’s existence; the reality of her small, beating heart.

They’re wed beneath garlands and hummingbirds as the sun sinks fully behind the treetops, and the vows are heavy on her tongue, promises of a devotion that won’t yield to the years, no matter how hard or how many. Her flower crown sits, feather-light on her brow, and she doesn’t feel quite so lopsided now, with Solas’ hand in hers, and their daughter held between them. A balance of sorts, finally. No false gods or prophets, and no one world put before another.

And so she breathes in the summer smells and feels the earth beneath her, and knows, with stubborn finality, that they have earned this peace.

Every last bit of it.


	9. sow, reap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there are some mentions of trauma in this chapter, but nothing explicit.

He falls asleep in his wife’s warm embrace, the exhaustion of the day dragging him under to the gentle cacophony of her even breaths, her soft snores, and her steady heartbeat against his back. He knows the shape of her against him, and the dip her weight makes in the mattress. He knows how she prefers to sleep when she’s pregnant (on her back, arms spread, belly-up), and now, curled on her side with her nose pressed between his shoulder-blades, her legs pulled up towards her chest.

He knows her. He knows _this_. This is his life, these few, precious hours before a shrill cry will shake them out of their slumber, and drag one of them from the warm comfort of their bed – both of them, if the first cry spurs another. He knows every creaking floorboard of his home, every jutting nail. He could walk the cottage in his sleep, feet following familiar paths, and rocking a small, screaming shape, pressed against his shoulder.

This is the life he falls asleep to. His wife, snoring softly. The knowledge of the three shapes, sleeping soundly two rooms over. The stirring of nightly noises beyond the window, and the balmy summer breeze.

But this is not the life he wakes to.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There are shackles around his wrists.

That’s the first thought that registers – the weight of them pinning him down, and the metal cutting into his skin, a sting that leaves the taste of blood on his tongue, along with something else; an odd, almost familiar aftertaste. It doesn’t feel like a new sensation, but something he’s used to, and the implication crawls along his skin, an eerie shiver.

Glancing down at his hands prompts further confusion – deep cuts encircle his wrists and fingers, but some of them have scabbed over, as though they’ve been healing poorly and irregularly. And some of the scars look old, as though he’s worn these manacles for years.

Something terrible and cold comes to settle in the pit of his stomach as he considers his hands, and there are other things he notices now – there’s a scar missing. It had cut across his thumb, a remnant of a foolish accident, cutting vegetables for supper while trying to keep an eye on the toddler hiding between his legs, tugging at his trousers for attention. But it’s gone now, and not like it’s healed – like it was never there to begin with.

He notices other things – the thick and angry red scarring of an old burn missing from his wrist; a souvenir from one of Sage’s magic lessons. Callouses that are no longer there, reminders of a labour learned with difficulty, of climbing roofs to fix leaks, and chopping wood for the fire. They’re not his hands, these too-soft palms, and his wrists weighed down by iron and blood.

“Awake at last, I see.”

The voice shivers across his neck, the jut of his ear, until it comes to settle in his mind, along with the realization of its _impossibility_ , because the speaker is a soul long lost.

Footsteps in front of him, gliding across the stone, and he lifts his eyes to find a familiar gaze looking down on him, eyes steel-hard and strangely detached, and set in a regal face with a high brow, beneath which a thin-lipped mouth is pressed in a severe, disapproving frown.

And Solas takes in his surroundings now – climbing walls of stone on all sides, but otherwise sparsely decorated. Windows far above, yielding slivers of light, and it hurts his eyes to look at, as though he’s spent weeks here, in the dark. Months. Years, even, and there’s a terrible thought tugging at his mind now, that it’s wrong, it’s all wrong, but he can’t put his finger on _what_ –

“Sleep well?” Elgar’nan asks then, and Solas’s heart plummets straight into his stomach.

“ _No_ ,” he manages, although he’s not certain exactly what he’s rejecting – the world in which he’s awoken, or the truth that is staring him in the face, bearing the visage of someone he hasn’t seen in a millennia. This is not a face he _knows_ – this is not a face that has any place in his life, the one he’s created for himself with Ellana, with–

“Sage,” he says, voice a hoarse rasp, and he tries to conjure the image of her in his mind – her mother’s hair, seed pearls and coils of sunset red, and freckles across her cheeks, the tips of her ears. A small nose, scrunched up with displeasure, before laughter follows, smoothing her features. He almost feels relief, but then–

He can’t remember the colour of her eyes.

Despite his guarded expression, the exclamation makes Elgar’nan’s brows knit together. “The plant?”

Thoughts churning rapidly now, Solas isn’t listening. Instead he’s rooting through his memory for clues – clues that he hasn’t simply imagined it all. Ellana, teeming with her first pregnancy, her second; stomach round beneath his palm, and the quickening of life within her. One heartbeat, two.

 _Mal – Samahl. Rowan._ He knows their names as well as his own; feels the syllables on his tongue, familiar things, begging to be spoken in fondness and exasperation alike. He knows their laughter, the shape of their smiles. The curve of their ears, similar but still entirely unique.

“If you are quite finished speaking nonsense, the others are awaiting news of your condition.”

Breathing is difficult, and he concludes that some of his ribs are broken – he feels it with every breath now; every bruise and slowly-mending bone.

“Who–?” But he already knows – he knows all their names and their methods. Their faces. Their clever, cunning smiles.

“We are all here,” Elgar’nan says calmly, as though speaking to a child. “Where have you been?”

There’s a headache pressing between his brows, needle-sharp, and his tongue feels too thick to form the words he needs – to contradict what he’s being told, because he knows this isn’t right, this cannot be right, even if he can’t deny the scrape of the stone beneath him, and the gaze watching him coolly, carefully, as a tethered hound that might snap its jaws at the first sign of movement.

“I am not here,” he says at length, tongue fumbling over the words. “This is not real.”

Elgar’nan’s expression remains unchanged. “I had never pegged you as delusional. But I suppose the years have changed you.”

Solas shakes his head – the movement makes the headache worse. “I am not the one harbouring delusions.”

“Are you not?”

“ _This is not real_.”

A pause, but if this is an argument, Solas is under no impression that he has won. And – “It is as real as I am,” Elgar’nan says, with a terrible calm that rings as loud as a shout. “As you are. And we have had this conversation before.”

He can’t remember, but it seems a foolish rebuttal, and would do him no favours, if there are any at all to be had, in his current predicament.

He tries closing his eyes, willing himself to wake – to shake off the manacles and the terror that has taken root in his heart, that he truly is delusional and that this is real, but that would mean–

“Is your regret so profound, you cannot face the truth of your own actions?” Elgar’nan asks, and Solas lifts his eyes. “Your choices led you here,” he continues. “You severed the bindings of your own trap. You may have set us free, but for your betrayal there is a far bigger price to pay than our freedom.”

He tilts his head then, gaze cold and calculating. “Although from your expression, I suspect your punishment has been just.” A pause, then – “The mind is a treacherous thing, Fen’Harel. It appears not even you are exempt from its wiles.”

Clenching his eyes shut doesn’t help – the room remains the same, the stone unyielding beneath his feet, and the shackles biting into his wrists.

“Still you fight. Perhaps you need a reminder of where you belong?” Elgar’nan asks then, and without giving him a chance to respond, steps smoothly out of the way, clearing Solas’ view of the room behind him.

The sight that greets him makes his heart stutter to a stop in his chest.

One arm missing, the other suspends her body above the floor, her bare toes brushing the stones. A webbing of ugly scars climb from the severed stump towards her shoulder and across her collar, veins dark and protruding. Her head hangs, chin tucked against her chest, and he can’t see her eyes, shrouded by the mass of her hair, tangled with long-dried blood. A barrier enshrines her, preserving her; a blasphemous mockery of their monuments of old, not carved in stone but flesh.

Disbelief swells in his chest, but he can’t speak – can’t make his body move, trapped by the sight and by his shackles, and it’s nothing like the uneasy confusion of his missing scars, the vicious feeling that flares within him now, stealing his words and all coherent thought.

“She came for you,” comes the calm observation from somewhere to his left – a bland reiteration of a story told many times. “Or do you not remember?”

A cold sweat clings to his back, and his mind is overturning with thoughts and impressions – images he can’t possibly know. A small shape hurtling towards him, his name on her tongue, and a force that throws her back – tossing her into a heap at the far end of the room. Familiar voices. Shouts. Old friends, old enemies, the lines between them blurring but in their midst is _her_ , and no confusion there, as to what she is. What she has always been to him.

And there is no confusion in his mind now, watching her battered, lifeless form – no stretch-marks along her stomach, the skin too taut and bearing no signs of two pregnancies. No evidence of the children he remembers – the smiles he can sketch in his sleep. Their names – their names…

He grasps for the syllables, but they slip between his fingers, and finally a panic surges, pushing him to his feet. He yanks the chain, the shackles digging into his skin, but he loses his footing, tumbling back to the floor with enough force to knock the breath clean from his lungs, her name a desperate plea on his lips–

He jolts awake with such force it launches him into a sitting position, heart lurching into his throat along with a shout that lodges itself at the bottom, escaping as little more than a strangled gasp.

A moment of complete and utter disorientation follows, before he begins to take in his surroundings. The blankets lie tangled around his legs, and he feels the press of the late summer heat, but the rivulets of sweat running down his back are not from the temperature but an entirely different reason. And even though he feels the mattress beneath him and knows this as his bedroom, his hands are fisted, white-knuckled with tension and the memory of the manacles, pinning them to the ground.

The mattress shifts then, and Ellana’s weight is a solid truth beside him. He feels her warmth, and hears her soft snores, her sleep unshaken by his sudden awakening.

Turning his hands over, fingers prying loose from their tightly clenched grip, Solas finds them shaking, but – there’s the scar running along his thumb, and the callouses on his palms. And there are no other marks on his wrists than the old burn.

Glancing towards Ellana, it’s to find her sprawled on her side, having kicked off the blankets in her sleep. Her loose shirt riding up her torso leaves her stomach exposed, and it’s with a care not to wake her that he touches his fingertips to the skin of her abdomen, following the peppering of marks stretching along the natural curve of her belly.

But despite the truth of her presence, and the feel of her beneath his fingers, he can’t quite shake off the dream, and he’s moving before his heart has had the chance to fully settle, feet taking him across the room and down the corridor, to the door at its end, sitting slightly ajar.

The mage-lights flicker on his approach, pale spheres suspended just beneath the ceiling beams, and sitting in the cradle of their glow is a bed and two cribs. One, two, three small shapes. Three sets of heartbeats.

Leaning his weight on the door frame, Solas takes a moment to gather his wits – the last, stubborn vestiges of the dream still cling, but with his eyes on the room before him he wills them to yield. This is real – he knows this room and its occupants. The pictures on the walls, painted over the years, a green, growing garden of weeds and wildflowers, sage and rowanberries. The small notches in the door frame marking his daughter’s growth.

A noise from one of the cribs draws his attention – a small, wordless babble, and Solas pushes away from the door, stepping quietly across the floor so as not to wake the other two. And for all that he’s not yet managed to fully shake off the dream, a smile curves as Mal hauls himself up in the crib, arms reaching towards him with a familiar, silent question.

“It would be you, awake at this hour,” Solas murmurs, to which his son only grins, and where he’d usually attempt to coax him back to sleep, it takes him only a moment to consider another idea, before he’s reaching to lift him from the crib.

Before he leaves, he spares one last glance to the others, finding them both sound asleep. Sage sleeps like her mother, limbs sprawled in all directions, and her hair a wild halo across her pillow. Rowan’s slumber is of a calmer sort, his pillow and blanket undisturbed, and his breaths soft and steady.

“Pa,” Mal says, patting his cheek, cheerfully awake despite the early hour, but Solas finds only relief in the familiar routine, passing through the cottage towards the door to the back garden. There’s a small step down from the threshold to the ground beneath, and he takes a seat in the doorway, sinking his bare feet in the soft earth. It’s not yet light out, but the dark has relented enough to let him know dawn is not far off, and it doesn’t take long for his eyes to adjust – to pick out the tree-line at the foot of the garden beyond which the river runs, and the well-trod footpath curving through the flowerbeds.

Mal sits surprisingly still in his arms, content for once not to take off running down the path, but he talks – half-words and sounds without meaning, his back tucked against Solas’ chest and bare feet kicking at invisible enemies. But there’s peace to be found in his easy, childish babble, and he lets it wrap around him, fingers running idly through the soft strands dusting the top of his son’s head.

There’s an ugly truth wrapped like a barbed vice around his tongue, that he’d forgotten, not just the shade of his hair but his name – all their names. An inconceivable thought now, listening to Mal’s eager chatter, but he remembers, and there’s a terrible irony there, Solas thinks, in that he can’t seem to make himself forget.

Morning creeps slowly across the garden, leaving a gleam of silver drew in the grass. Mal eventually falls asleep, sinking back against his chest, but Solas remains wide awake, watching the grey darkness relent, bit by bit.

He’s lost count of how long they’ve been sitting there, when the sound of quiet footsteps behind him tugs at his attention, and he inclines his head to find Ellana appearing in the doorway behind him, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders and sleep still heavy in her eyes.

“What are you doing out here?” she speaks the words around a yawn, before he feels her touch against his shoulder. “Trouble sleeping?”

He considers Mal’s slumbering form in his arms, a child’s blessed unawareness in his heavy, honest breaths. Small and warm and solid. _Real_.

“Of a sort,” Solas says at length, and leaves it at that. Because how can he tell her of what he’d seen? Her battered form, suspended before him; no breath drawn from her lungs, no pulse pushing against her skin, and the finality of death etched even deeper than her superficial wounds.

How can he tell her he still isn’t sure he won’t wake up one day, to find it all a dream? To find his children only figments of his imagination, and her just a memory, fading with every breath taken in the world where he belongs. The world he’d created.

But Ellana doesn’t push. Instead she settles down beside him in the doorway; tucks herself against his side, and pulls her quilt about their shoulders.

“Tell me when you’re ready?” she asks quietly, with an understanding that tells him she’s guessed enough already, but whatever she’s gathered, she seems content to let him keep the rest to himself, at least for now.

Which is why his answer comes so easily, and, “Yes,” he promises, resting his cheek against the top of her head, happy for now to merely enjoy her presence. He’ll speak of his fears soon enough, when the sun has risen and the dream doesn’t cling with quite the same persistence. When he can no longer see the shadows of old ghosts at the corner of his eye, waiting to drag him back.

And when the sound of small feet running across the floorboards is there to remind him of his choices, and the world that came of it.


End file.
